What does Cyberspace mean to me?

The description that most fits my preconceived notion of “cyberspace” is “Cyberspace: The tablet become a page become a screen become a world, a virtual world. Everywhere and nowhere, a place where nothing is forgotten and yet everything changes.”

“the tablet become a page become a screen become a world, a virtual world”

This part reminded me of something from the book “Remediation: Understanding New Media” by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, which was covered in part in DTC 375, Language, Texts, and Technology. In it they discuss how new media takes what old media created and changes it into something new. In some cases, old media then changes itself to resemble the new media, such as when Facebook changed the way users updated their status to mimic how Twitter works. The information being shared in cyberspace hasn’t changed, it’s the way in which its being displayed/transmitted has changed and it will continue to change because we have short attention spans and a constant need for the newest thing, be it hardware or software. Cyberspace is no longer just about sharing information. It has taken on a life of its own and has become a world itself.

“everywhere and nowhere”

I can’t recall the last time I went somewhere and didn’t see at least one person using a mobile device to do something other than make a phone calls. We are no longer limited to using desktop computers to update our FaceBook status, to send a tweet, or to Google something - all we have to do is get out our phone and we can say hi to the world. And that world is ever expanding has more and more people are gaining access to cyberspace. But cyberspace can also be considered as being nowhere because it has no real physical form, it exists only when someone is accessing the information, otherwise it’s just information that is stored on a server somewhere.

“a place where nothing is forgotten and yet everything changes”

Once you put something out in cyberspace, it is there forever, regardless of whether you delete it or not. It may be saved by the program you used to send it or someone may have downloaded it to their personal computer. Unfortunately, too many people tend to forget this when posting pictures of and information about themselves, some of that stuff should not be seen by anyone! Of course, it might be that only those of us who are “critical concerned” about privacy actually care who sees what.